1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to remote controlled circuit breakers, and in particular to remote controlled circuit breakers for battery powered riding toys.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
One of the most popular brands of riding toys in the United States are Power Wheels®. The first Power Wheels® vehicles were released in 1971. In the forty years since, over 25 million vehicles have been sold. Another popular brand of battery powered riding toys is Peg-Perego®, which has been manufacturing riding toys since the 1960s. Its current line of battery powered riding toys includes battery powered John Deere and Polaris vehicles. Despite their popularity, riding toys come with substantial risk of injury to the riders. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, of the 69 toy related deaths reported involving children under the age of 15 in the years 2006-2008, riding toys were the number one cause.
During this same period, there was an estimated 229,600 toy related injuries. Likewise, riding toys were associated with more emergency room treated injuries than any other category of toy. Most were treated for head and facial injuries. Every year the cost of emergency room treatment for children with toy related injuries is more than $385 million.
Of the injuries and fatalities caused by riding toys, 75 percent were related to motorized vehicles, like Power Wheels® and Peg-Perego® vehicles. Riding toy injuries and deaths are caused primarily by falls and drowning. Reported deaths on riding toys range from children being struck by cars after riding into the street to drowning after riding into nearby ponds, lakes, or rivers. Thus, it is apparent that a contributing factor to the number of injuries is children riding in unsafe areas around stairs, traffic, and bodies of water. To prevent the risk of injuries, adults bear the burden of supervising children closely while playing on riding toys and keeping them within arms length.
To assist the supervising adult in controlling the riding toy, the prior art discloses remote controlled circuit breakers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,439,071 to Rodriguez-Ferre discloses a child's toy vehicle having a receiver circuit safety device which may be enabled by remote control. One drawback of the Rodriguez-Ferre patent is the need for the adult handling the remote control to continuously hold the button on the remote control. PCT Application No. PCT/2004/000150 of Gavish et al. solves this problem by disclosing a toy control unit that receives signal from a wireless remote control unit and can slow or stop the movement of the toy vehicle.
The prior art remote controlled circuit breakers do not provide for retrofitting standard electrical systems of the battery powered vehicles. Thus, adapting the standard electrical systems to use the prior art circuit breakers would be burdensome and require technical expertise. It is therefore desirable to develop a remote controlled circuit breaker that is capable of retrofitting standard models of battery powered riding vehicles by connecting to the existing electrical components via complementary connectors, thus requiring no technical expertise for installing. These limitations of the prior art are overcome by the present invention as described below.